Kate Harrington

Movement

My current focus—or is it avoidance?—is to learn how to promote my Pawn Quest series now that the trilogy will soon be completed. Quantum Quest is on its way, but it’s like never knowing exactly when a baby will pop out.

You see? What’s important in my life is also a source of fear and anxiety. Promotion doesn’t come naturally. My mind always returns to a grade school project of selling magazines. I was only willing to approach one next door neighbor (a classmate lived on the other side of us) and my aunt and uncle. The end!

I tell myself that people have reported enjoying my other books. But I bounce between anxiety and avoidance, while I should be deep into research, looking into the best practices that fit my style.

I try to remember gems of wisdom from my therapist:

“Walking is the Number One Trauma healer.”
“When disturbed, go for a walk.”
“The only thing to do is to do it.”

Much of the year felt like it was Moving Too Slow (but not slow enough). My manuscript was in the hands of a copyeditor for months. Then it moved on to my jacket designer, and again time passed. I expect to see the final cover design any day now. Having allowed the slowness should have let me come to terms with the subsequent publicizing. I have made some little progress but that doesn’t erase my desire to turn into a field mouse and hide in a hole in the ground.

The year is now Moving Too Fast, causing me to itch from anxiety. (My mother once told me that’s how her mother reacted to stress .) Year’s end and holidays cloud the picture. It’s been several years since I brought a book to Indie publication. I’m scared I’ll mess up.

**October’s rains brought out roses in many yards.**

Moving Just Right. And there’s no right time to bring out this last book of a trilogy. I need to relax, let it come out when everything has been dealt with. I attended a writers conference over the weekend and though it was exhausting, I felt at home with my people, just as I felt comfortable years ago when attending library school.

I have to keep remembering that. Meanwhile: I’ll keep moving.

One step at a time. Take a Walk.

And enjoy the roses.

A Hodgepodge of Recent Readings.

**Sophie and I both enjoy the warm sun these days.**

I have a stack of nonfiction books waiting for me to finish (or even begin), but when the news is heavy, facts are difficult to absorb, especially if the book is talking of the climate challenges ahead. At least, this fall’s election news brings optimism.

Meanwhile, here’s a listing of some of the novels I’ve read recently.

Remarkably Bright Creatures, by Shelby Van Pelt, 2022. Marcellus, a giant octopus nearing his end of life, acts as a narrator. I admit I was wary of a short-lived creature who knew so much about the humans looking into his tank, but I gradually got wrapped up in several lives, especially Tova’s, the aging aquarium cleaning lady. And so what if Marcellus acts the part of an 8-armed deus ex machina? He succeeds in making Tova happy.

Found in a library box at the park: Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy, by Gary D. Schmidt. Winner of the 2005 Caldecott and Prinz awards. Schmidt sets the tale in 1912 Maine around an actual event. Young Turner stands up to his minister father while befriending a Black girl who lives on a nearby island that’s destined to be vacated of people. An often sad coming-of-age story.

I’ve always enjoyed Patchett’s books but never came across her first one until now: The Patron Saint of Liars, by Ann Patchett, 1992. Covering a long span of years in Kentucky, the reader moves through various points of view, while a healing spring attracts a fashionable hotel which in turn becomes a home for unwed mothers run by nuns after the spring dries up.

While browsing my public library’s ebook offerings, I was surprised to discover that Alexander McCall Smith had written a World War II novel. The Good Pilot Peter Woodhouse; a novel of love and war, by Alexander McCall Smith, 2018. Peter Woodhouse is a dog who brings about connections between an American flyer and a British girl. Flying as an Air Force mascot, the dog survives a crash landing, wherein he is the catalyst in connecting a Dutch resistance fighter and a reluctant German soldier. Unlike many WWII tales, Smith’s tale takes us all the way to the Berlin Wall.

Moss’d in Space, by Rebecca Thorne, 2026. A cozy science fiction novel. about an abandoned, intelligent moss in charge of a space ship. Moss suffers abandonment issues when its pilot leaves it stuck in storage for many many years. A young woman, anxious to transport her sister to healthier air, purchases the ship, thereby freeing Moss from its prison and giving it a new outlook on life. A sequel is due out in 2027.

So what books have you enjoyed recently?

In Praise of Small Things

Now Thursday, I apologize for missing my self-appointed deadline of Wednesday blogs. My jacket illustrator needed some questions answered, and the morning disappeared. So here’s a collection of small offerings, a day late.

I spend a lot of time watching the sky while walking Sophie. especially the puffy clouds scudding across that overhead New Mexican blue. Always changing, always pulling my thoughts upward.

And then recently, against a clear sky, the doves that perch on our neighborhood power line (I’ve counted up to 60 there) suddenly took off, half swirling one way, the other half spiraling in the other direction beneath a clear blue sky, before they came back together to do it again. Oh, to fly!

A few days ago, I heard the first “caw” of the season from a solitary crow. This morning as Sophie and I crept (her speed) around the block, a whole chatter of crows were flying back and forth between trees. One carried something in its beak. Another, high on a tree limb, busily pecked at what was probably a pecan. We’ll soon see shells—and sometimes whole pecans—on the sidewalks. Welcome back, Crows!

As we move closer to winter, I’m always cold, wearing layers of clothes. Walks never seem sufficiently warming, but— A rare, rare moment fired me up to do some long-overdue vacuuming. All that upper body work did the trick. I pulled off my sweater. Maybe I should vacuum more often?

Never underrate the small pleasures. What are yours?

Past and Present

Someday I hope to have good news to announce, i.e. the publication date for Quantum Quest, which brings to a close my many years of writing the Pawn Quest trilogy. Those years reflect my involvement, not the far shorter time that actually passes in the tale.

Meanwhile, I’m preparing an Afterward to be included in this last volume, a part of which is directly below:

***

Many years ago, I turned to writing when I realized that the coming birth of my daughter would delay my dream of finally putting my library degree to work. On the other hand, those years of reading aloud to my children reawakened my deep love of juvenile literature, so that ultimately I found my niche as a Youth Services librarian.

My early writing attempts resulted in many false starts. One idea that endured combined a picture and an emotion. Out of my old manual typewriter came a description of a teenaged boy on a strange planet—but who was he? Why was he there? About the same time, I read an article of a mother losing her children to authorities through no fault of her own. Fiery protective instincts flared for my own kids, and also for that boy isolated on another planet; he too had a mother—somewhere—who cared.

Over the years, Ran’s story grew, he made friends, he landed into trouble and boarded that starship. My children grew older as we moved and moved again. I thought about applying for a job but, after that long hiatus from school, had lost confidence in myself in spite of my masters degree. Therapy aided my move out into the world, helped me find my dream job in a public library system, and gave me the courage to divorce my husband. For years, I was busy and happy, and wrote sporadically.

The tale continued growing, but remained unfinished. In those last years before the Covid-19 epidemic, my characters began clamoring for release. Ran and friends were stuck somewhere in the middle of a Hero’s Journey with no escape. Typhus demanded his own adventure. And I too felt stuck in a story with no end.

Somehow I had to free myself from the beginning of the tale, so that my characters could complete their coming of age adventures. But again I had fears and self-doubts, just as years before I had doubted myself when facing the job market. If I couldn’t finish, maybe I should quit altogether. But the thought of quitting caused a profound sense of loss. My only other route was to walk into a new terror, the unknowns of self-publishing.

***

One last volume awaits going to press, but my terrors have now moved on to the challenge of publicity, not publication. I am both working on it and avoiding thinking about it.

Years ago, I accidentally drove my car into a ditch. A very kind man stopped to help. To my embarrassment and shame, that act of being pulled out of the ditch brought up fear that caused me to hit the brake pedal.

How many times in my life have I acted against my own good? I don’t believe I’m the only one.

For months, the book was in the hands of a copyeditor. It now awaits a jacket cover. I suspect the slow progress is due to my own vibes of “not yet, not yet,” and the universe is listening.

It’s time to lose the fear and take my involuntary foot off the brake.

Recipes for Balance

Saffron crocuses in my backyard. Every day or two there are new blossoms from which to harvest the red stigmas. What luxury!

Years ago, while waiting to hear back from a job application, I gave myself orders to: Take a walk. Talk to someone. Write something. I see now that that recipe served me to balance Body, Mind and Spirit. Nowadays, I find myself looking for balance again (without any specific orders, alas).

As mentioned last week, my therapist says “The only thing to do is to do it.” I squeezed in that blog between putting my son on a plane and attending a noon meeting. The next thing I knew, I was weeding and mowing a section of the front yard. Aha! I thought: Life in Balance, both head and body alive.

But I haven’t worked in the yard since. Maybe after this blog goes to press?

Balancing a diet is what is needed for Sophie Dog. She’s had troubles since last June. Back then, we were fighting diarrhea. I think there was a parasite dogs were getting into at the park. Anyway, it took a long time and finally some antibiotics to clear up the matter.

That bout of diarrhea spoiled Sophie against ever going back to her very nutritious kibbles. No, only chicken and veggies for her, thank you very much. But by then, she had also been diagnosed with kidney disease, stage 2.

So now she needed to switch over to an approved kidney diet. As her chief cook, I’ve been preparing batches of food for her, keeping tabs on the ingredients in each recipe, slowly folding in a bit more kidney-approved kibble into each new mix, but . . .

We began Recipe # 10. Sophie certainly ate a few meals of it, maybe a quarter or a third of the batch, but then she quit cold ~~turkey~~ chicken.

Aargh! Nothing interested her. I didn’t have anything to offer until I’d cooked up more chicken. By that time, she was refusing everything. After several meals of chicken broth, she finally agreed to consume chicken and sweet potato. Now she’s up to chicken, sweet potato and some oatmeal. But no kibble yet.

This morning the vet assured me that occasionally going off food is par for the course with kidney disease. And Sophie is at a good weight for her arthritis complications, since we don’t want her carrying around too much mass.

Judging from yesterday’s meals—three of them—she’s back to doing well.

Okay then. Life is one big balancing act for us all! Sometimes it feels like we’re tensely straddling a tight rope.

I hope you all find a chance to relax and enjoy the view.

Breaking Out

Do you know how hard it is to stop a habit and then start it up again? The resistance. The second thoughts. The imaginary fears. I’m not sure what all is involved, probably all of the above. It’s certainly true where swimming is concerned and seems to be the same for blogging.

Anyway, my therapist says the only thing to do is to do it. Also, to break paralysis requires movement. The number one healer of trauma is walking. Certain events require immediate action. No time to think, just do.

Such as dead raccoons.

There are raccoons in the neighborhood, but I rarely catch a glimpse. There used to be some nights Sophie refused to go into our backyard at bedtime, so I got in the habit of taking her out front instead. I think she smelled raccoons. A neighbor said he once saw a whole tribe of raccoons walking single file along the block wall behind our houses.

Evidently one raccoon fell off that wall into our carport. It was there, dead, on Saturday morning. What to do? The body was then covered with a weighted-down plastic bin and left where it fell, in sunshine.

I called 311. The city worker assured me they’d turn my information over to Animal Welfare. No word all day. That was Saturday. I didn’t make any calls on Sunday. Monday morning I called 311 again, gave them my many-digit reference number. I ended up with no new information and a second many-digit number. And no action.

What 311 doesn’t tell you is that the city does NOT pick up dead animals off private property. Nor are you allowed to dump them in with your trash, though I suspect many do, considering the alternative of paying many dollars to a private company.

I called the top-rated company. Their recorded message was that they were booked into November. What to do? I went out to weed the yard. Movement! It helps one think things through. That’s when I thought of my own pest control company. No, they didn’t pick up dead animals either, but recommended Critter Control.

I called and spoke to a lovely young person in Georgia. She said someone would come out, and then send a work order for me to accept, and then someone else would come take care of the matter. What? I protested. That much coming and going sounded overly wasteful of time and energy to remove one dead critter. Instead, she agreed to take my information and have someone local call me within 20 minutes. It didn’t happen. That was Monday.

On Tuesday noon I got the call, which was good because two appointments had filled my morning. We chatted, the man sent a doc to my email account. After signing and paying $$$$, someone arrived within two hours.

As I mentioned, the raccoon was in a sunny spot. The maggots were spectacular. I said we’d thought of bagging it. The tech agreed that would have been a good idea, and to have stored it in the shade. Next time. He also sanitized the area.

Whew! A four day dilemma solved.

Okay. Having completed this blog, I’ll do my best to continue. See you next week!

For the Birds

The heat is on—outside and sometimes in. A call to repair my swamp cooler (because water was pouring off the roof) eventually brought a repairman. He showed me a photo of a series of holes in a tube from which water was spraying. He blamed it on birds seeking water.

Note to Self: Refill the bird water dishes every day. I have two, but sometimes they go dry. I’m sure the birds would prefer an open source to having to prospect for their drinks.

A neighbor stopped to chat as I was preparing to water some bushes edging the lawn. She asked if I liked peaches. Who doesn’t? She had bought some expensive bird food, and then discovered that the birds around her fruit trees increased exponentially, so she had resorted to netting her peaches, only to find a Cooper’s hawk trapped in it.

The hawks at the park have produced a fine pair of fledglings this year. A few days ago, I watched them tussling in the street.

This morning walking Sophie, I could hear their high pitched piping in a tree a block from the park. We stood beneath it and I looked up. One of the birds still showed bits of down, but when I aimed my phone at them they took off—so no pictures.

When Sophie and I reached the park, I spotted feathers in the grass. Hmm. Did the hawks have pigeon or dove for supper last night? If I was reading the fledgling’s cries correctly, they hadn’t had breakfast yet.

And yes, those peaches were delicious. As are the tiny plums she gave me.

Here’s Miss Sophie in her SophieMobile. She gets to avoid hot streets in the evening, and I get to walk a lot faster, till we get to the shady park.

We’re still wrestling with her digestive issues. Just finished another vet visit.

A Day in the Life . . .

I seem to have taken a long sabbatical from blogging. And, I noticed that I was eating for no-good-reason and also exercising less, ditto. It occurred to me that maybe the eating was to replace the writing I wasn’t doing, and that I need to get back into a weekly rhythm of blogging, which requires an introspection of the mind, rather than a stuffing of the body.

Recently on NPR, Scott Detrow interviewed Kenn Adams, a playwright, who has developed an 8-sentence narrative device he calls Story Spine. So, how about if we start that way:

Once upon a time there was a woman who lived contentedly with her wonderful husband and their loving dog.
Everyday, her husband prepared the dog meals and they divided the dog walks between them; and, as he slipped deeper and deeper into dementia, he maintained those daily rhythms.
But one day, he took the dog for a walk and didn’t come home.
Suddenly, the whole neighborhood and the police were looking for him, until hours later she got a call saying the two had been found.
Because of that, she took charge of his meds, saw to it that he took them on time, and monitored his movements more closely.
Because of that, she took on more and more of the daily duties.
Until finally, he stopped eating and told her that he was ready — no, that he insisted (with a thump of his fist to his knee) on dying and within a few days he was gone.
And ever since then she has lived with both a sorrow and a great gratitude for having had 34 years of contentment with such a wonderful man.

Two years later

Once upon a time, a woman had a small dog, the last living (aside from friends) remnant of her life with her husband, dead these two years and four months.
Every day, she fed and walked the sweet dog who rewarded her by staying close and by sleeping beside her at night.
But one day, the dog got diarrhea and was taken to the vet for treatment; but a change of diet with added probiotics and psyllium fiber didn’t seem to help.
Suddenly, the dog stopped eating.

Never enough sofa time for a sick Sophie.

With Sophie’s refusal to eat, I experienced PTSD. A deep sense of grief washed through me. Been there, done that—but was this the same as before? After waiting to hear from the vet, I called them again. This time we got an appointment for emergency care.

All Sophie’s vitals checked out. She was treated for nausea, received hydration, and is back home with an antibiotic.

So not this time, no new loss. Sophie is going to get better.

On Weeding: Plants and Lives

On weeding plants. Our strange winter—mostly warm with lots of early moisture—has left Sophie with a dilemma of how to pass through the barrier to the walkway in our backyard where she goes to do her business. Actually, that particular barrier is the over-grown fall crocuses from which I harvested their saffron last year. Such giving plants, I thought, deserved to not be mowed down.

But when Sophie looks for alternate routes, she discovers weeds, lots of them, especially large wild mustard plants.

I will say one good thing about Daylight Savings Time—and I absolutely hate those bi-yearly clock switches—is that I find time and daylight after supper to go outside to weed. I hope to seed part of the cleared area with a flower mix, which needs to be scattered right now. It’s hurry up and clear the ground time.

On weeding lives. Actually the life needing to be weeded is singular—my own—though my intrusive weeds are multiple. I’m not going to list them, thank you very much. Their nature is to fill in any space where there’s a vacancy. In my case, this means escaping into books and dvds. Anything to not think or feel.

I recommend having a therapist to help work through the mess grief makes of one’s life. I’m very good at shoving feelings deep down; those burials leave a kind of emptiness which therapy helps refill.

Another source of help came when I accepted a challenge to write morning pages for two weeks. Filling both sides of a sheet of paper has served as a kind of meditation, recording a jumble of thoughts.

This week, I sat in a sunny spot scribbling away. It occurred to me that the little nook I was in would be an ideal setting for my drop-leaf desk, which then stood in a dark, chilly corner. In the sun, I might be much more inclined to actually put it to use.

That idea came so alive that I started in immediately. Two sets of shelves have been emptied, scrubbed, and relocated to make room for the also emptied and scrubbed desk. Years of thinking about downsizing turned into action with this little move.The detritus—items I’m not putting back on the shelves or into the desk—remain to be sorted and redistributed.

Inside and outside weeding. Sigh. Well, both labors are a beginning.

How about you? What kind of clearing out have you been putting off?

Bouncing from book to book

I apologize for my long silence. As my therapist tells me—I’ve never been here before; never been widowed—two years today. Sometimes I bury myself in fiction (especially familiar stories) rather than ponder indecision and unanswered questions such as Where do I go from here?

So, where thoughts and books are concerned, it came as a pleasant surprise to discover energy in exploring and pondering topics found in not one but four non-fiction books simultaneously.

The first showed up in the library box at my neighborhood park. Goddesses in Older Women; Archetypes in Women over Fifty,by Jean Shinoda Bolen, MD. 2001, which highlights the wisdom and understanding gained over the years that now can enrich our lives. The book reminds me of my readings on goddess religions decades ago, which inspired the backgrounds of my as-yet-unpublished fairytale retellings.

Then there’s a title mentioned by a friend. I began reading a library copy and ended up purchasing my own, which fully intend to return to reading soon. Goliath’s Curse; The History and Future of Societal Collapse, by Luke Kemp, 2025, explores, as far back as the Stone Age, the rise and fall of societies. The more we are on an equal footing with each other, the longer our societies last. The curse in the title relates to the accumulation of goods by a few. Beginning in agricultural times, certain crops lent themselves to storage and plunder. Societies, watch out!

The only book I’ve completely read (and returned to the library) was for a class on climate change. Bill McKibben’s Here Comes the Sun, 2025. Though McKibben doesn’t ignore the problems in store, he writes glowingly of where we’re headed, but—like the top dogs in Goliath’s Curse—today’s holders of petrochemicals are fighting hard to retain their “wealth” in the face of solar and wind energy freely available worldwide. We really have a lot of work to do in a very short window of time!

And finally, from the public library’s new book shelf, I grabbed up The Last American President; A Broken Man, a Corrupt Party, and a World on the Brink, by Thom Hartman. It makes for grim reading, as he details the many decades long course of actions that has brought our country to the extreme wealth-gap of today.

I need to get back to reading. What happens when societies collapse? How are we to get past this tug of war between renewable energies and petrochemical oligarchs? And how will we tackle the long struggle ahead?

***

Fifty years ago, a brain child of mine appeared with the picture of a teenager standing on a strange planet. Over the years, that vision has grown to a saga, the Pawn Quest trilogy plus one. The final volume is currently in the hands of a copyeditor. I mention it because its conclusion is dependent on the cooperation of teens and adults and even former adversaries.

We’re all in this together.